why me?

[small_magics]

Isibel spends her last day on the island flying, and then she rejoins her expedition, and packs, and sleeps, and in the dawnlight she gets back on the boat to sail back to the Elven Lands.

She is kept quite occupied with small magics to keep the ship operating smoothly, and also with notebooking - writing quite small, as she brought more than enough notebooks for three weeks but then unexpectedly used many of them to draw and write with the demon and has only half of one left for several days at sea.

They land on the shore of the Elven Lands on schedule, and disembark.

Comments

[small_magics]

She thinks of the map, of the direction they'll want to go to reach where her teacher lives, and she sighs. Perhaps when the Bond has settled some it will be better.

Or maybe she'll recognize her own thoughts marching across their minds forever even if theirs ultimately settle into, not invisibility, but the difficult cipher it takes centuries to learn to read.

(She has no protection like that; the mindreading is a property of dragons and the dragon will be able to read her whatever they do. Maybe if he sleeps the demon will be awake but unable to get any detail from her? Maybe? She can hope.)

[endragoned]

When the demon and the dragon met and Bonded, they were like this almost from the start. They understood each other instantly, and recognized their sameness amidst all the differences, and that was that.

They hope it will not be that way for Isibel.

[small_magics]

Let it not be so. Let there be an end. Let the Wild Magic be not that cruel. She can come out of this if it's short enough, if they can find enough stopgaps - but if they can't she may just save the world and then overdose on dream-honey, and there is a thought she never thought she'd have, she never ever wanted to die, she couldn't imagine it, she believed in theory that such suffering could exist but she didn't know what it would be like and didn't think even this fate would qualify. But having no quiet place in her own mind to retreat where no one will look - and feeling it every time she has a thought, whispering across the other mind -

Well, they can live without her, right? She'll learn magic and save the world and if they haven't figured something out by then there's dream-honey, they can live without her.

[endragoned]

They do not want to live without her.

But they already knew they were going to, if by some incredible chance the demon is not killed. Elves don't live forever.

Perhaps, though - if the demon is killed - the dragon can sleep for a thousand years, and never take another Bondmate, and he and Isibel can die together as dragon and Bonded used to. Perhaps that would be best.

[small_magics]

Perhaps.

Once she wanted to live forever.

She can't quite grasp the feeling now.

[endragoned]

"My love, my love," the demon murmurs, kissing her forehead again.

[small_magics]

"Beloved," sighs Isibel.

She thought one day she might love someone - not like this, never like this, but that she'd meet some elf and they'd be drawn to each other in the way that elves are, and then they'd probably have a terrific fight over betrothal pendants and proper wedding ceremonies because the way elves are married also involves thought-sharing, but she would never have agreed to that. Now that's hardly likely at all; even if her personality survives what's to come she's going to be damaged. Maybe she was never meant for that special connection, or maybe she would have found someone who'd be content to remain unmarried yet -

She bites her lip sharply, meditates on inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale, there is only breathing, certainly nothing that she not only wouldn't like read out of her thoughts but would also be mortified to put into words, only breathing, breathing, breathing.

[endragoned]

"Oh, my love," the demon sighs, smiling a little. He loves her so much. He loved her even before; they both did.

[small_magics]

She didn't.

She does now - and the history of Bisochim is even more incomprehensible; how could he love her enough to care so intensely about the prospect of her dying and never listen to her -

She couldn't refuse his will when he willed things.

Could she just will the reading away -

[endragoned]

In a sense, yes.

Because when the minds of her Bonded are full of blood and fire, when their demon-self's memories of being a plaything for every Endarkened in Shadow Mountain are the only thing they can think of, they can't really pay attention to her thoughts anymore.

The dragon cannot stop reading her; he has tried. But she can exert her will on him, and when she tries to make him do the impossible, all that's left is the sense of being forced, to which the demon has his own associations and plenty of them.

[small_magics]

It would imply that she ever stopped crying, to say that she burst into tears, but she sobs harder, and curls into a ball, and withdraws again into breathing-breathing-breathing without stopping to wonder if they'll fall out of the sky into the ocean.

[endragoned]

When she comes back again, they are all a little damp, and her Bonded have already forgiven her.

[small_magics]

She's sorry anyway. She didn't even quite decide to do it, just - lurched desperately towards the sliver of hope.

[endragoned]

"Oh, my love," murmurs the demon. "It's all right."

He's speaking his own language, but that is no longer a barrier.

[small_magics]

"I love you," she sighs. She shuts her eyes. Maybe she can sleep. Elves can sometimes sleep through the day.

[endragoned]

The demon's arms are very warm and comfortable, suited for sleeping in.

[small_magics]

She drifts off eventually. She can in fact focus her way to sleep if she tries and she's tired enough; emotional exhaustion apparently counts.

She speaks, even when she doesn't dream.

[endragoned]

She is... very peaceful, like this.

The demon wraps her in a little bit of magic to keep her comfortably sleeping.

[small_magics]

And yet the Elven Lands are not infinitely far away. Most particularly on dragonback.

[endragoned]

In theory, it should be impossible for an Endarkened to pass the land-wards, and if any of them had been thinking about it, they would perhaps have come up with some sort of plan to get around that.

In practice, they reach the dragons' roost by Karahelanderialigor without trouble. The demon sets his love down gently on the ground, and asks Saravasse where he and the dragon might find somewhere to take an undisturbed nap, and she shows them to a cave and they go to sleep curled up together. (Saravasse is, to everyone's surprise but theirs, quite fond of the demon. They understand one another. They didn't speak long when she was visiting his Bonded, but he left an impression.)

[small_magics]

Isibel opens her eyes, when the demon sleeps and his magic dissipates. And she feels no thought-echoes. And she sobs in relief and gets to her feet, trembling.

[pythbox]

Saravasse is still there, watching over her.

[small_magics]

"I See you," murmurs Isibel.

[pythbox]

"And I you," says the scarlet dragon. "Now what?"

[small_magics]

Isibel barely even flinches. There's a world of difference between someone being verbally inquisitive and someone actually prying into her brain. "Now I go find my teacher again and learn Elfmagery," she says, "I suppose."